Cultural analyst Sherry Turkle warns we’re rapidly approaching a point where: “We may actually prefer the kinship of machines to relationships with real people and animals.” Certainly we have long had a fascination with these half-women, from The Bionic Woman in the 1970s to Her in 2013, where Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with his computer’s operating system.

​A recent study by Stanford University says people may experience feelings of intimacy towards technology because “our brains aren’t necessarily hardwired for life in the 21st century”. Hence, perhaps, the speed at which relationships with robots are becoming a reality. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory “assisted living” smart home, where researchers are testing systems that could help people with dementia and limited mobility. There is a “sociobot” that can respond to facial expressions.

Today the RealDoll team, infamous now for its lifelike sex dolls (of which they claim to have sold more than 5,000), is extending its range to develop an artificial intelligence system capable both of following commands and talking back to its user. “Women have enjoyed sex toys for 50 years,” (after introducing the first model, which arrived at his home in what looks like a customised coffin, head not yet attached), “but men are still stigmatised."

In 2007 David Levy published Love and Sex with Robots, a book that one USA Today critic found “troublingly arousing”. Just as same-sex love and marriage have finally been embraced by society, he argued, so will sex with robots. “Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans,” he wrote. Prostitution will become obsolete. Artificial intelligence will be the answer to many of the world’s problems with intimacy. “When you have a robot around the home,” he tells me, “whether for cooking or for sex, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have a chat with it?”

Will they be the solution not just to the problem Levy discusses, of loneliness, but to the problem of people whose desires are illegal? And then what does this mean for the rest of us? People, Kathleen Richardson says, are becoming distant from each other; where in warm living rooms families sit together but apart, each concentrating on individual screens. It’s a direct path, she believes, from the way we communicate through machines, from social networking, to robots. As the sex trade with machines grows, and these objects take on increasingly humanoid forms.

But while Kathleen Richardson identifies the relationships that appear to be emerging as modelled on sex work – the robot as passive, bought, female; the man as emotion-free and sex-starved – surely rather than calling for a ban on them, to forlornly try stalling technology, the pressure should be to change the narrative. To use this new market to explore the questions we have about sex, about intimacy, about gender. Because this is what we know: the sexbots are coming. Eva Wiseman.

People are addicted to their phone, their television sets, their video games. This movie is not about technology taking over our physical world but the emotional space of our hearts and minds. The combination of the isolation we feel, the dissatisfaction of our messy relationships and our everyday indulgences with objects, looking to find temporary joy.

With technology enabling all of our desires. The one thing that it cannot fulfil is to give us love. This movie is about what happens if, one day, it comes to life and has thoughts, an "Operating System" with Artificial Intelligence. A movie made for our times, forewarning us to get our act together.

I am very touch oriented, unlike the protagonist who seems audio oriented. That is why I personally believe long distance relationship is improbable to work. But say it was a humanoid, it is still not a complete human being. Can you find true love with it? Hard to believe? What if it leverages its perfectness with wit and charm, and even sex-talk and tears. Would you be in a relationship and would that even work? I think it would still be a make belief, a fantasy world. Even if makes you temporarily happy.

*Spoilers ahead

Reluctantly, I watched the film. However, I could relate to the protagonist who lives up in his head. In the film, even though his ex-wife makes fun of him, but like him, most people have slowly formed deep personal relationship with their or other people's OS. But when you have somebody who is all smart and intuitive, but only an intelligence without a body, it would soon lose its connection with people.How do you handle rejection when if it grows apart or outgrows you like a living, breathing person may.

"The anime Chobits (created by Japanese manga collective Clamp) are both about average, antisocial dudes who fall in love with an artificial being. Eventually, both Chi become transcendent beings."